Harry Potter Revealed
Nick Gillespie | March 29, 2007, 10:13am
The British and American publishers of the Harry Potter series have revealed the design of the cover for the final book in the series, to be published this July. Having read this series as a parent to a now-13-year-old son whose imaginative world has been massively influenced by Potter's fictional universe, I'm both excited to see how it all turns out and dreading the end. There is a generation--or several generations--of kids who have not only been made readers by J.K. Rowling's roman fleuve, but have become part of a great shared experience. It's a stunning achievement and one worthy of respect and understanding.
Take a gander at the U.S. cover for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which looks pretty much like most of the other covers in the series (though it's different than the Brit one; it's also a wraparound cover that apparently shows Voldemort on the inside flap).
The Harry Potter phenomena continues some of the issues I raised in my post below about how critics of popular entertainments (and sometimes unpopular ones) often scoff at works without even trying to understand why they win great audience appeal. Or worse, such critics reflexively dismiss something as unsophisticated, aesthetically deficient, etc.
This is the role that, for many years, the critic played in our society--the arbiter or guardian of taste, who typically attempted to draw hard social-class lines based on very soft criteria. Which isn't to say that you can't say something is "good" or "bad"--we do that all the time--but that it's incumbent upon critics to explain their aesthetics, which are always heavily embedded in context and are never really transcendent. And, more important, that critics who fail to account for why certain audiences respond to certain works are just lazy and, I think, ultimately uninterested in the very cultural phenomenon they seek to valorize and demonize.
The treatment of the Potter books often exemplifies this tendency. Consider, for instance, Harold Bloom's dismissal of a series that has created millions of young readers who will, almost certainly, graduate from Hogwarts to that most loathsome of categories (and the one that pays the ursine Bloom's Mallomars bill), "serious literature." Writing in the Wall Street Journal in 2000, Bloom huffed that J.K. Rowling "feeds a vast hunger for unreality," "makes no demands upon her readers," that her books will not "enrich mind or spirit or personality," and that her "prose style...[is] heavy on cliché."
He continues:
"In an arbitrarily chosen single page...of the first Harry Potter book, I count seven clichés....At a time when public judgment is no better and no worse than what is proclaimed by the ideological cheerleaders who have so destroyed humanistic study, anything goes. The cultural critics, soon enough, introduce Harry Potter into their college curriculum, and The New York Times will go on celebrating another confirmation of the dumbing-down it leads and exemplifies."
More in that jugular vein here. Esteemed critic Bloom--definer of the definer of "the Human"--shares with law student Eshelman below an amazing disinterest in how actual people use culture to create identity, take pleasure, and negotiate their relationship to the world. It's a lot easier, after all, to dismiss that which you don't like than to understand why others might enjoy it. Which should be the starting point--though certainly not always the end point--of cultural criticism. It's a move that often leads to stunning insights.
For instance, in a 1997 symposium called "Creating Culture: How to cultivate the arts when the old rules don't apply," Reason Contributing Editor Charles Oliver reports on the book Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Lit prof Carol J. Clover actually talked to teenage boys who consume vast amounts of slasher films. She walked away with a very different sense of their engagment with the material than is commonly asserted:
What she found were not mindless zombies passively absorbing bloody images, but viewers who were aware of the conventions of the genre and who made watching such films ritualistic group activities: They talked to the screen and commented to each other on the action. Clover theorizes that such films offer moviegoers a way to deal with primal fears, especially their fear about the weakness of their own flesh. By identifying with the victims, viewers are engaging in empathy, not objectification.
Reason's cultural coverage often explores similar themes of audience reception. Read more here and here and here.
Reason on the Potter stuff here and here and here.
Shannon Chamberlain | March 29, 2007, 3:22pm | #
Warren:
"Third year students at Hogwarts have far greater powers. And yet they are still immature children. And yet they live part time in the Muggle world undetected."
Surely these are complications that might lead to interesting scenarios (and do!), right? There's constant commentary on the magical world's desire to hide itself from the real world, and on its successes and failures. This is called "plot tension."
As for stitching together the folklore of Europe (and how LOtR does this successfully and Potter doesn't), you've provided no examples, so I can't evaluate your claims.
"As far as there being so many fans of the book speaking for it's prowess. As a rule, I find popularity, bodes ill for artistic merit. There are exceptions."
You didn't really respond to what I said. You were claiming that the books were uninteresting and unreadable. I said that obviously people found them both interesting and readable, because they were reading them with apparent interest. This seems tautologous, but hey, if it's what you need to hear...
"I absolutely reject the assertion that "children are often better judges of character depth and complexity." Appreciation and judgment are learned skills. The should develop with age. Not everyone's does, but most do (just look at your high-school record collection)"
No, I think adults learn to develop a tolerance for bad books and boring characters because certain academics tell them they ought to be put to sleep by what they read, because nothing that doesn't put one to sleep can have any merit. Harold Bloom is a case in point. Here's this (soon-to-be) dead white male dictating a canon of literature, some of it good, some of it dull--and as adults, we think we ought to give his opinion weight, instead of consulting our own feelings on the subject. Children, fortunately, aren't burdened with the opinions of a third-rate literary critic who abuses a bully pulpit.
"I've read more than two critiques of potter that dissected the work academically and found it wanting."
Oh, well then, if you read ACADEMIC opinions...Seriously, though, do you really consider this an argument? "I read an article or two written by a couple of professors, and they said they didn't like Harry Potter." Because professors are never wrong?
Karen | March 29, 2007, 10:19pm | #
TWC, do you know anyone who's ever finished
Ulysses? That includes anyone who read that monstrosity as a class assignment? I had a professor in college who believed that Joyce wrote that one as a joke, making it deliberately unreadable, because he'd gotten bad reviews for the depressing but actually understandable
Dubliners. I like that better than the thought that he actually believed U. was a good book.
So, here's my guess for who dies in the next Potter book:
1. Arthur Weasley, and at least one and possibly two of his chilren. Arthur has an ongoing personal feud with Lucius Malfoy. The feud wasn't emphasized enough in the movies, but is a big part of "Chamber of Secrets" and "Goblet of Fire." Arthur has long been an effective opponent of the Death Eaters, and is now highly influential in the ministry. Finally, and most important, he's the most important adult male in Harry's life now, and killing him will appear to Voldemort like killing Harry's father again. I don't think Molly is going to die, because, among other things, she's actually related to the Blacks and the Malfoys, and I think that relationship will be detailed in the next book. She has to be alive for that bit of the plot.
2. Hagrid. He's an object of contempt to the Death Eaters, but he is also physically powerful and immensely loyal to Dumbledore. Getting rid of him will appear to Voldemort as weakening Dumbledore's influence and threatening Harry. I think he's going to die to protect his brother, who won't deserve or appreciated it. Also, there is something of a pattern in her killing off characters with color names. "Albus," meaning "White," Dumbledore, Sirius Black, and Rubeous, i.e. Red, Hagrid. She likes patterns and word games, and I think she'll stick with this one.
3. Narcissa Malfoy. Dies at the hand of her sister protecting Draco, who then benefits from the protective effect of her love. I'm not sure if Draco dies before he gets redeemed, but I'm perfectly sure he does get redeemed. He'll either die or live out his life in poverty and insignificance to make up for the crimes of his family. Lucius dies too, but he's too repulsive to merit his own paragraph.
4. Severus Snape. I don't think Harry kills him, but I do think he's a double agent. The combination of him having taken the Unbreakable Oath to protect Draco and Dumbledore's last
words being "Please, Severus," clearly indicate that he killed Dumbledore at D.'s own direction to prevent Draco from becoming a killer. Snape is the one person other than Neville who has a chance to kill Voldemort.
5. Ron. I really, really want to be wrong about this, but if either Ron or Hermione buys it I'm going to bet on Ron. For one thing, there are such a large number of Weasleys they make rather good expendables. Always another one for vengence later. Also, Ron has a serious weakness in that he feels overshadowed by Harry, Hermione, and his brothers. Ron's sin is envy, and Voldemort works very well with envy. I see V. exploiting Ron's deeply submerged envy at Harry and Hermione's skill, in such a way as to allow either one of them, probably Hermione, to end up in danger. Ron sacrifices himself when he sees what he caused.
5. Neville. I really, really, really, really want to be wrong on this count because Neville is my favorite character. I also am less convinced of this one than the other four. Neville could easily have been the boy in the prophecy. Voldemort and the Death Eaters hold him in contempt, and she likes to make small and weak things be the means of ending big and powerful ones. I see Neville actually being the one who takes out Voldemort, and the LeStranges who tortured his parents, and Voldemort's utter astonishment that something he thought of as weak could destroy him. She uses lots of Christian images and tropes in the other books, and the idea of the weak and powerless vanquishing the big and strong is the most important Christian plotline there is. Voldemort respects Harry's skill and strength, which means he'll be on guard for Harry. He dismisses Neville, so Neville is going to be able to sneak up on him.
The question is whether Neville dies or not. Given the Christian themes, I think Neville almost has to. Self-sacrifice to defeat the ultimate evil. There is plenty of evidence that I'm wrong, however. The biggest bit is that Neville and Luna are now a couple. She doesn't like to kill off love interests, and if Neville survives, it's so he can marry Luna.
I don't think Harry dies. For one thing, Scholastic Press is a business, and whatever she might think as an artist, money talks. Parents are not going to shell out $25 for a book once they know the main character dies in the end. These are still children's books and children like happy endings. Also, it works against the overriding theme of the books -- Love Wins Out. If Harry -- The Boy Who Lived -- dies, then Lily's self - sacrifice was meaningless and the whole story arc was pointless. I think Harry lives, marries Ginny, and becomes the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor at Hogwarts. (Rowling has actually denied this, but I think she's funning us.)
On some peripheral points, Dumbledore comes back through Draco's Hand of Glory. Remember that Dumbledore's hand suffered from some awful rotting disease. Somehow, D. changed his own live hand for Draco's corpse one. The corpse hand poisoned him. I also wonder whether Voldemort experiences redemption before he dies. In
Dracula, Bram Stoker writes of the relief and happiness on the vampire's face when he finally dies. Ms. R is a well-read and thoughtful woman, and she might want to mimic that scene at the end. Also, it makes a nice, round plot if Ultimate Evil achieves some understanding of his sins at the end of his life. Finally, McGonigle becomes the new Hogwarts headmistress.
